sending money abroad

[triplets]

Hi,
I just know someone out there will be able to tell me! What is the cheapest way to send $500 to Florida, from England?
Thanks!

I don't know if it's the cheapest but have you looked into PayPal ? I've used it a fair bit for internet payments and found them very good. I don't know how much it costs for the other person to pick it up at the other end though, so you should read the small print carefully and compare with other options before going ahead.

You can send a cheque that you get from your bank. You order it through the bank for the amount that you want to send and it's made out to the person that you want to send it to and they cash it when they get it, just like a normal cheque obviously. It's a safe way of sending money abroad, but the bank usually does charge an amount for doing this I think we had to pay about £10 for this service but that may depend on your bank and it may have gone up since I did it.
We had to do this when we were sending money to Canada last year.

Don't send a cheque as the other person may be charged horrendous amounts at the other end. At least I was when somebody last sent me a cheque.

The cheapest way (if they have a bank account) is a Swift bank transfer - ask at your bank. This is also faster than sending a cheque. It costs £7-£10.

Otherwise you could use a Western Union transfer. I can't remember how much they charge, but I know it's less than £15. You phone them up (and you'll have to search on Western Union for the number I'm afraid) with your credit card and the money will be available almost immediately. You do need to find out where the nearest Western Union office is for the person in Florida though - it'll probably be their nearest main post office.

If the person you are sending it to has a visa card, the cheapest and securest way can sometimes be to simply make a payment from your bank account to their visa account.

Very Cheapest route is often to find someone (like, er, me!) who has a US bank account & UK bank accounts and see if they'll let you exchange through them. You can do the exchange at inter-bank rates that way which saves money in itself. I could do it for you easily (you give me the money in £ and I will send a cheque to Florida for you in US$), but don't expect you to trust me as a near stranger. You can email me via Contact-Talker if wanted. Do you know any Americans living in UK, or Brits living in USA?

For anyone who ever needs to know, there are firms that specialise in foreign exchange for individuals, but they only deal with large sums (~$3000 and more).

PayPal has a bad rep -- you could read a lot of complaints about it on the Ebay chatboards; Ebay owns Paypal. Paypal offers no protection to people in the UK but tonnes of protection to people in US, for instance. You hear stories of US Paypal payers taking back the money a week after they sent it, and UK sellers being unable to do anything about it.